Economic Insight Based on Real Spend, Not Survey Data

The Nasdaq corrected −13.2% between late October 2025 and the end of March 2026; while the High Technology BSI set new highs in five of six months and ended June 2026 6.5% above December 2025. 

In late 2025, manufacturing purchasing surged as businesses restructured, which appears to have helped them absorb the shocks of the last six months; every 2026 month sits above the entire 2024-to-mid-2025 range.

Its contracts are claims on other sectors' transformations, and the plateau established in January 2024 held through the first half of 2026; May and June then printed above the entire 2025 range. Higher prices — not higher transaction volumes — drove the spend elevation across this and every other sector during the half.

Governing commitments were rewritten — the fee schedule, the grant flow, the subsidy expiry — so this is the one sector whose spending moved, contracting through six months in which the broader economy expanded. That is what proves the flat lines elsewhere are findings, not smoothing artifacts.

The sector that sat out the acceleration stayed out of it: A steady, elevated baseline extended to a series high in April 2026, then eased modestly through July.